Morgan?s own desires for the same mountaintop. King Kalidasa?s pursuits and achievements foreshadow Dr. His crowning achievement was the construction of ?The Fountains of Paradise,? which utilized a pump system and slave labor to propel jets of water high into the sky. Hundreds of years before, King Kalidasa struggled with the same sect of monks when he built his pleasure gardens. Morgan is not the first ambitious man to have grandiose plans for this particular summit. Unfortunately, this mountain is the sacred home of a sect of Buddhist monks who are not willing to budge unless one of their prophecies is fulfilled.
He?s discovered a new material that he thinks is strong enough to withstand the gravitational and climatic forces that would act on such a structure and he?s found the only place on Earth where it?s possible to achieve his dream: the top of the mountain Sri Kanda on the equatorial island of Taprobane (pronounced ?top-ROB-oh-knee?). Vannevar Morgan, a materials engineer, is either pure genius or pure crackpot: He wants to build an elevator to space. It?s a great time to revisit this classic The reader does a competent job although I was irritated by the indefinable accent that he gave to the main character. The only awkward bit is the final third, which spends too much time on a tension-free, slow motion rescue mission on the tower. The lack of drama in the plotting doesn't bother me, as I love Clarke's exploratory, thought-provoking ideas. He spins into the mix a tale of an ancient Sri Lankan king and an amazing description of humanity's encounter with a knowledge-disseminating alien spacecraft that passes through the solar system on its own mission of discovery.
Clarke uses the central idea as an opportunity to wax lyrical about human ambition and the urge for progress.
I like to think of this book as a prose poem, rather than a novel. Maybe Clarke should have just written a non-fiction book on the subject, but in practice his majestic descriptions are more thrilling within the context of a narrative, however clunky. Instead, it's a beautifully-written description of the gradual construction of a space elevator, from the germ of the idea, to its ultimate fruition. The characters are cardboard and it has very little sense of conventional drama or progression.
If plot is your passion, don't read this book.
0 kommentar(er)
